Pandora Is Being Sold for $3.5 Billion

Pandora is about to be purchased for a massive $3.5 billion. SiriusXM announced earlier today (Sept. 24) they’ll be buying the music streaming service, creating the largest audio entertainment company in the world.

The launch of Pandora in 2000 was revolutionary for introducing music fans to new artists, creating playlists based on a song or artist of an individual’s choosing. Pandora took its 70+ million users down a sonic wormhole, all while facing huge competition from services like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and Tidal.

SiriusXM tested the waters with Pandora last year, spending $480 million to buy 19 percent of Pandora’s stock. Since anticipation of a SiriusXM purchase started bubbling up, Pandora stock doubled in price. Still, Pandora lost $221 million in the first half of 2018, although that was down 43 percent from the first half of 2017. [via CNN]

"We have long respected Pandora and their team for their popular consumer offering that has attracted a massive audience, and have been impressed by Pandora's strategic progress and stronger execution,” Jim Meyer, Chief Executive Officer of SiriusXM states. “We believe there are significant opportunities to create value for both companies' stockholders by combining our complementary businesses. The addition of Pandora diversifies SiriusXM's revenue streams with the U.S.'s largest ad-supported audio offering, broadens our technical capabilities, and represents an exciting next step in our efforts to expand our reach out of the car even further. Through targeted investments, we see significant opportunities to drive innovation that will accelerate growth beyond what would be available to the separate companies, and does so in a way that also benefits consumers, artists, and the broader content communities. Together, we will deliver even more of the best content on radio to our passionate and loyal listeners, and attract new listeners, across our two platforms."

"We've made tremendous progress in our efforts to lead in digital audio. Together with SiriusXM, we're even better positioned to take advantage of the huge opportunities we see in audio entertainment, including growing our advertising business and expanding our subscription offerings,” says Roger Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Pandora. “The powerful combination of SiriusXM's content, position in the car, and premium subscription products, along with the biggest audio streaming service in the U.S., will create the world's largest audio entertainment company. This transaction will deliver significant value to our stockholders and will allow them to participate in upside, given SiriusXM's strong brand, financial resources and track record delivering results."